Alberta advances regional safety net for rural health, minister says

The road to unique regional backstops for patients and their primary healthcare providers continues to form across smalltown Alberta, the responsible minister told The Macleod Gazette in a recent interview.New administrative bodies based on regional travel patterns will strengthen primary care networks, said Justin Wright, the minister of primary and preventative health services.The system will also support patients and their communities if their PCNs collapse, he maintained."In the past, we’ve actually had PCNs fold and there be no support for those regions," Wright said.The emerging system “gives us the avenue that, as a worst-case scenario, there will always be the PCC (primary care corporation) that could step in,” he said.The province announced last month that it’s creating seven primary care corporations to support PCNs and other providers. Jurisdictions for the PCCs align with seven previously announced regional health corridors.It’s all part of the government’s ongoing re-creation of healthcare delivery in Alberta under separate pillars for primary care, acute care, mental health and addiction, and continuing care or assisted living.The seven corporations are classified as provincial health corporations, made possible under new Alberta regulations.The organizations, each with its own leadership and staff, will look after planning, reporting and coordination work that sometimes pulls frontline providers from directly serving patients.“The corridors are really about making sure that planning is properly done, that the coordination, reporting and of course the accountability work is being done,” said Wright.The system will free up primary care networks and providers “to focus on the navigation of patients through the system,” he said.Some of the more rural areas of the province will be served by corporations for four corridors—southeast, southwest, northeast and northwest. Calgary, Edmonton and central corridors will look after the rest of Alberta.According to the latest government information, Alberta currently has 39 PCNs with more than 4,200 physicians, serving more than 4 million of the province’s 5 million or so people.PCNs in Alberta came into being in the early 2000s to allow groups of doctors to create not-for-profit corporations around their own teams of nurses and other professionals. Prompted by transition funding early on from the federal government, PCNs receive provincial per-patient funding.Their purpose was to attract doctors, improve coordination of primary healthcare delivery and allow for team-based service.A regulation creating primary care corridors as legal entities comes into force Sept. 1, with the organizations themselves expected to become operational in spring 2027.Wright held up his own corner of the province as an example for the power of a strong PCN.The Palliser Primary Care Network does “a truly amazing job of making sure there is practitioner buy-in,” said Wright, the UCP member representing Cypress-Medicine Hat.Palliser has consistently reported patient attachment of above 93%. The rate—a measure of those adults with a family doctor—is typically in the low 80% range in Alberta and the mid-to-high 80s nationally.If the new regional support system can widely boost attachment, it’s doing its job, the minister said.This new model builds on recommendations and consultation arising from the Modernizing Alberta’s Primary Health Care System initiative. MAPS found that Albertans and healthcare providers want a stronger regional approach to primary care.For Albertans, especially in rural communities, the corridor system “means a stronger focus on closing local care gaps and keeping more care closer to home,” said last month’s news release.

Alberta advances regional safety net for rural health, minister says

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